These statistics quantitatively express a significant shift in political mood and perspective that has occurred over just the last year, as the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the US and the world.
An overwhelming majority, 78 percent of all Americans, believe that the divide between the rich and the poor is a serious issue. Of the 68 percent of all Americans who believe that the rich are not paying their fair share in taxes, 49 percent believe that “a complete change of our economic system” is in order.
Obviously for most of these people "a complete change of our economic system" is probably more along the lines of "lots more tax on the rich" rather than socialist revolution, but it indicates that a message about class inequality is one that a huge percentage of people are willing to hear, even more so if you avoid openly using the s-word off the bat
This is the thing that I think the comrades who say "they don't really want socialism they want social democracy!" are missing. Yes, technically correct, the people surveyed probably don't have a correct definition of socialism that they're working with. But in the US, the first and biggest obstacle we face in getting to real socialism is getting over this weird boogeyman of "eeeeevil socialism" that we learned from decades of cold war propaganda. Just being open to something called "socialism" is progress. And tbh have huge numbers of people open to social democracy isn't the worst thing in the world, I think.
I think this is the really interesting paragraph:
Obviously for most of these people "a complete change of our economic system" is probably more along the lines of "lots more tax on the rich" rather than socialist revolution, but it indicates that a message about class inequality is one that a huge percentage of people are willing to hear, even more so if you avoid openly using the s-word off the bat
This is the thing that I think the comrades who say "they don't really want socialism they want social democracy!" are missing. Yes, technically correct, the people surveyed probably don't have a correct definition of socialism that they're working with. But in the US, the first and biggest obstacle we face in getting to real socialism is getting over this weird boogeyman of "eeeeevil socialism" that we learned from decades of cold war propaganda. Just being open to something called "socialism" is progress. And tbh have huge numbers of people open to social democracy isn't the worst thing in the world, I think.
I mean, the biggest obstacle would probably be some alphabet agency, per usual